RailRiders' Richardson is a trail blazer

There were nights he’d race home, jump into his bunk bed, tune the AM radio dial to 590, and drift away.

Back then, not even a teenager, Antoan Richardson could hardly dare to dream he’d be living the life he does, running down line drives into the gaps, stealing bases at a rate few in the International League can match, dropping bunt singles the way old-time fans claim every player used to do way back when.

Plenty of kids like him who grew up in the Bahamas dreamed, of course. But not of playing baseball.

That AM dial, the Florida Marlins game that pumped through the speakers, got Richardson close enough.

Just seven kids from the Bahamas who have dared to dream about being ballplayers have played in the big leagues. Richardson is one of them. He played nine games and went 2 for 4 with a stolen base for the 2011 Atlanta Braves.

In fact, he’s the only one since Wil Culmer played in seven games for the 1983 Cleveland Indians, making Richardson the only player a generation of fans in his native land has seen step onto a big league field.

He returns home every offseason, carrying bags of bats and gloves and balls and spikes. As he looks around at burgeoning Little Leagues in Nassau, at players learning a game far earlier in their lives than he could, he remembers those times where baseball was no closer than a dial away — and he doesn’t want those kids to feel that far off.

“I just want to give them as much knowledge as possible,” Richardson said. “I try to be an inspiration to them, being the most successful guy in this era. I think it’s important to show my face. ... I teach them the game. I also teach them, ‘It’s possible, man.’ ”

Meager beginnings

Thousands of players have made it to the big leagues carrying unlikely stories, learning their craft on choppy, dusty infields and on sunbaked outfield grass. In the Bahamas though, Richardson didn’t really even have that.

He became a professional baseball player without playing youth baseball. No summer camps. No travel squads.

“(Baseball) was almost nonexistent,” Richardson said. “I grew up playing fast-pitch softball.”

He started playing at age 8, and his pregame stretch basically was completed by the mere act of getting the softball field ready. He and his friends would have to shovel horse and cow manure off the piece of farmland his buddy’s father owned just to get it usable as a field.

“It would basically be just a chance to throw the ball around on certain Saturdays,” Richardson said. “We’d have been lucky if it rained. Then at least the field would have gotten some water on it. ... It was terrible. But when you’re 8 or 10 and you’re running around, it doesn’t matter.

“Sure, maybe you slip in manure every now and again. Maybe mom and dad would have been (upset) when you got to the car, but we were just happy to be running around with each other.”

For Richardson and the children of the Bahamas in the 1990s, that’s what baseball — or, softball — was. A chance to run around. To have fun. But that’s where it mostly ended.

Richardson got lucky, though.

The long and short of that story is that a coach from a high school in Florida happened to catch Richardson running around one of those outfields when he was barely a teenager. Noticing his raw athleticism, he asked Richardson if he’d be interested in refining his skills at American Heritage High School in Delray Beach.

Richardson accepted. Mostly because he had no choice.

“The decision wasn’t really in my hands,” he laughs now. “My mom kicked me in the butt and threw me toward the door. I had to go. The rest is history.”

Richardson was a solid baseball player, once he figured out how to hit the pitchers throwing overhand. A good enough student and player, in fact, to be accepted to several prestigious colleges — and ultimately attend Vanderbilt University. But baseball was neither his best game or his first love.

The first time he received a college scholarship it came from Brown University, asking him to play football. His mother looked at his 5-foot-8, 170-pound frame and put a stop to football, too. Today, he dresses in a baseball locker room, and though he still loves football, he realizes, proudly, his mother was right.

Giving back

Three players from the Bahamas were selected in June’s amateur draft, and if they sign, that will bring the number of players from the island in affiliated ball to six. Richardson feels a connection to each of them.

He didn’t have baseball. They do. And that’s a big difference.

“From day one when I got into this thing, the goal was always to try and break down some walls or whatever,” Richardson said, “to kind of get the word out that we are playing baseball down there, and we do have some talent.”

There’s a Little League in Nassau now that has 700 kids playing in it. Richardson is the proud elder statesman who never forgot where he came from, toting bags of equipment simply because the kids love it.

The Bahamas are still home for Richardson. He lives there in the offseason. His life has been lived, in many ways, trying to unite everything he has come to love — his homeland and baseball included.

In that sense, what do four big-league plate appearances mean? To Antoan Richardson and the children of Nassau, everything.

They mean hope and possibilities, and for today’s youth, those are important lessons in any field.

“My goal is to teach them there are things you can do in this sport, that there’s more to life than what’s on this island,” Richardson said. “It’s a great island, but if this is something you want to do, you can do this.”

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